Caroline England

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Well, Betsy, that is pretty. I like the roses. When I was a little girl I had a garden just like one of those flower-beds. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll make a flag of coloured seaweed to fly from the top of the house. I expect there are lots of little children living in the house, and perhaps it’s one of their birthdays and their daddy has flown the flag in its honour, and their mummy made it for them.”

  Elizabeth sat back on her heels.

  “But there isn’t a daddy or a mummy in the house, and there aren’t lots of children, there’s only me.”

  “Oh, darling.” Caroline crouched down beside her. “Can’t poor mummy live in the house with you?”

  Elizabeth looked at the house. It did not matter any more who lived there. Her mother, with her talk of daddies and mummies and flags, had smashed it just as much as if she had rubbed it out with her foot. She moved restlessly under her mother’s eager eyes. It was only a make-up. It made her feel silly that her mother should pretend it was a proper one. She got up.

  “It’s not a real house.” She lifted her foot and viciously rubbed out her morning’s work.

  Chapter XII

  JOHN sat at his desk. He wrote with world-obliterating concentration, in a small, neat handwriting. The sun was sinking behind the house opposite. There was a distant clink as glass and china were carried to and fro. A clock struck seven. John heard and saw none of these things. His eye was on the sun setting with almost ludicrous effectiveness on the clipped-off-looking top of a kopje. He saw with titillated senses the savage arms of a cactus, stark against the splendour. He was feeling the incredible space and silence. Desperately he dug through his brain for words which, through the medium of the man he was drawing, would tell something of the beauty he had found in South Africa. He laid down his pen. He pressed his hands over his eyes. He tried to re-feel a night. He had wandered away from the camp. He had walked far enough to be beyond the range of voices. A slight wind was blowing, it made a brushing whisper as it came. There was no other sound. God what peace! If only he had the power to get something of what he felt at that moment into words. Words! Even as he fumbled for them, a longing which amounted to sickness swept over him. To go back, or if not there, away somewhere alone. This domesticity, how it tied you. Breakfast, luncheon, tea, dinner. “Where are you going, John? What have you written, John? Helen said such sweet things this morning, John.” He loved Caroline, yet he fretted and fumed against the ties of her. He pressed his hands closer to his eyes. It was coming now. The brush of the wind, the stars, the silence. The door opened.

  “John darling, do you know what the time is? Have you forgotten we have people coming to dinner?”

  John dropped his hands. For the first time since he had been writing at his after-tea stretch of work, he realised how tired he was. The nerves at the back of his neck seemed tied in a knot. He had an inclination to curse. Instead, he meticulously piled his numbered sheets together.

  “I’d have come when I was ready,” he said gently, carefully keeping the note of irritation from his voice.

  Caroline recognised his tone. She knew he was tired and would have liked to have snapped at her. She slipped her arms round his neck and rubbed her face against his. “You’re tired, darling. But your publisher is coming, you know. You asked me to ask him.” John looked at her contritely.

  “What a beast I am. I did ask you, and you were a good obedient wife and did as you were told.” He took her hands. “And she does hate dinner-parties, doesn’t she?” He fondled her fingers. “Lilias is the fourth, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Caroline took her hands away and moved to the door. “You told me to ask her. You must go and dress.”

  John could have hit her. Caroline could be annoying. She did not know about Lilias naturally, but she had never liked her. Then why could she not say so, instead of just “You told me to ask her,” in that aggravating tone of voice. He shifted his grounds of grievance to something more discussible.

  “Dress! Why couldn’t you have told them to come as they were?”

  Caroline smiled at him as if he were a naughty child.

  “Distinguished authors dress for dinner. Hurry up, darling, I’ve got a most exciting piece of news I want to tell you.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “No. I’m going up to hear Betsy’s prayers. I’ll tell you when I come down.”

  They climbed the stairs together. At the foot of the nursery flight John paused.

  “Give Betsy my love and tell her that I hope it’s a nice fat angel to guard to-night.”

  “You are naughty.” Caroline went up the stairs. “Angels are very comforting things for children to believe in.”

  “So are fairy-tales,” he called after her.

  John was tying his tie when Caroline came down. She sat on the end of the bed.

  “Oh, John, Father has asked us all to stay at the Manor for the Coronation.”

  John made a careful bow.

  “But I’ve taken a window. You said Laurie and Betsy ought to see the procession.”

  “But, darling,” Caroline’s voice was edged with amazement. “Of course I’d never have suggested it if I’d known Father was going to ask us.”

  “I suppose he’s got his courage together now your aunt’s shut up.” He turned round and looked at her with one eyebrow cocked. “You don’t really want me to waste that expensive window, do you?”

  “But we must go to the Manor now he’s asked us; you can see that John. It will be wonderful for the children to see Ellison plant the oak. I’ve always wanted to see one planted myself. Father’s so proud of the coronation oaks; he always said there was a very nice site for this one, but he’s afraid there may be trouble with the next. Such a windy rise, not at all the place for a young tree.”

  John grinned at her reflection in the glass.

  “I shouldn’t worry about where they are going to plant an oak for the Prince of Wales. Edward the VII’s isn’t planted yet. What I should worry about is how you are going to persuade the children they’d rather see a tree planted than a procession.”

  “I’m sure they’d rather come to the Manor. I’ve told them such a lot about it, that they might have lived there. Laurie knows all its family history.” She sighed. “Wouldn’t it have been nice if Ellison had married young and had a baby boy to be present.”

  John looked at her with resignation.

  “I should face facts squarely, if l were you. Judging by what I hear of Ellison he’s very unlikely ever to produce a son to plant a tree on that rise you’re fussing about.”

  Caroline flushed. She spoke with the angry nervousness of one who hopes by the speed of words and the tempo at which they are spoken to refute a nasty possibility.

  “Of course he will. He knows he has to. He’s always known it since he was a little boy. He’s the only son, so he must have a boy or he breaks the line.”

  John laid down the clothes-brush with which he had been brushing his collar. He sat beside Caroline.

  “Is it nice living in a fairy-tale? Does it make it easier to believe ‘Once upon a time a King had one son and he sent out messengers to look for the most beautiful Princess in the world for him to marry’? Does it make you believe that the wretched Ellison, because he has been born a Torrys, will do his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased Milston Manor to call him?”

  “But it’s not a fairy-tale. Ellison may be a little wild now, but—”

  John interrupted her.

  “There has always been a Torrys in the direct male line since the first Richard built the Manor. Don’t I know my piece nicely?”

  Caroline got up and held out a hand.

  “Come on, we must go down.” She squeezed his arm. “You do laugh at me.”

  “Laugh.” John considered the point. “No, I don’t think I laugh. There is something splendid about your
attitude, but I’m glad I’m only the son of a shopkeeper. One has less illusions that way.”

  “You’ll see what I mean when we get to the Manor,” she said confidently.

  John stopped and pulled her face to him.

  “Me at the Manor! You must be mad, my sweet. I wouldn’t go near the place. I’m a poor boy from Butterford, who won scholarships and got on in the world. I’m blown up like a penny balloon. I’ve got so that I don’t cringe before waiters and can pretend I’m not pleased to meet a Lord. Do you think I’m going to let you take me to see your relations, so that they can dig pins into me and watch me go down flat again?”

  They moved on.

  “But you’d like Father, and he’d like you.” John shook his head.

  “You can’t persuade me. I’ve been treated as a bad smell for fifteen years.” He put his arm round her. “People of low origin harbour grievances. A well-born Torrys wouldn’t know that, but it’s true. Besides, my dear, fair is fair. Have I ever asked you to come to Butterford?”

  “But I’d like to. I’ve always said so.”

  They had reached the drawing-room. John leant against the mantelpiece.

  “And my mother, for all she’s comfortably off now, would forget herself. She might even dust a chair for you to sit on. You’d be charming and they’d get on with you, but I should be ashamed. I’ve always thought being ashamed of your parents is about as low as anybody can sink.”

  Caroline stroked the silk of her dress. She had got used to John with the years, but she was still slightly embarrassed at the eager way in which he would unbury his private self. This time she was spared looking for an answer, for the door-bell rang.

  Caroline was not fond of entertaining, and she loathed entertaining the literary. Nothing in her training had provided the angle of mind necessary for such occasions. This dinner, she knew, would be a strain. The only guests were the publisher Paul Bromley and Lilias. Obviously, John would talk to Lilias, which meant she must have a great deal of Paul Bromley.

  Paul Bromley ate with immense speed in order that the action should not impede conversation. He spoke on the format of the novel. Caroline gazed at him with a carefully arranged, receptive expression. Each time Mr. Bromley paused to thrust a mouthful down his throat, she broke in with “I do so agree,” or “How enormously interesting.”

  At the other end of the table John was engrossed with Lilias. Lilias Dines was the widow of an author and the daughter of a brewer. The combination was very satisfactory for Lilias, as she stood for the unusual mixture, money and art. John never considered Lilias from either angle. He knew she must have money, for she was always exquisitely dressed. He admired her late husband’s works, but saw no reason to suppose that contact with intelligence had put an extra grain of sense into Lilias’s head. He liked Lilias because she combined being an unutterable fool about most things with the wisdom of the world in matters of love. He wished, in his nicer moments, that there was no Lilias and that he was faithful to Caroline. But as a lover Caroline was not restful. She had no conception of sinking down to depths to which the mind could not follow. She gloried in the fact that, according to the Church, marriage was made for the procreation of children, and sank to no depths from which she could not rise quickly to think of those children, and feel the solid quality of her happiness with John. For all his easiness with words, John found it impossible to tell Caroline that love was a gossamer affair better not defined.

  Lilias played with her bread. She had ridiculously long black eyelashes, which fluttered helplessly up and down when she talked.

  “Well, it would be nice to go to the Coronation. Do you mean to say that Mrs. England would really rather see a tree planted?”

  “Yes. Much rather, and I can’t waste the seats.”

  Caroline had caught the word ‘Coronation.’ She moved restlessly. She was tired of looking receptive. Her head was floating with detached scraps on the format of novels. For a second she allowed her eyes to move off Mr. Bromley’s face and instead, she rested them on John and Lilias. John and Lilias were at that moment looking at each other reflectively. They were both thinking of the Coronation evening. That would be a nice way to celebrate. Caroline saw the glance and disliked it, but before she allowed herself to dissect it, she repeated to herself a formula. “It is so nice for John to have women friends. I am sure it’s good for his work.” She turned to him.

  “John dear, Mr. Bromley is being so interesting about novels. Do make him tell you some of the things he has been telling me.” She smiled at Lilias. “I caught the word ‘Coronation.’ It’s the one thing we think about, isn’t it? Are you going to see it?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t quite made up my mind.”

  In a moment Caroline grasped that Lilias had been invited to fill the empty window. She smiled at her graciously.

  “Well, don’t make up your mind. I am taking the children to my father for the festivities. John can take you to the Coronation in our places. It’s a lovely idea. Leave it to me. I will arrange it with him afterwards.”

  Caroline waited in the drawing-room for John to come back from seeing off the guests. He came in yawning.

  “What about bed? What a bore Bromley is. But he’s a good publisher. He wants us to dine with him next week. He’ll probably have collected some interesting people, so I said we’d go.”

  “Oh, dear,” Caroline looked depressed, “we do seem to go out a lot.”

  “I wish you didn’t hate meeting people.” There was a sigh in his voice.

  “I don’t.” Caroline struggled for words to explain her feelings. “Only we’re so happy here. You and I dowstairs and the children asleep upstairs. Just ourselves. I never want anyone else.”

  He put his arm through hers and pulled her up. “Entertaining is an adventure. You choose four, eight, twelve people, that have something to them, and give them to each other. Think of the thoughts they stimulate, and the friendships made. I see all life as a bed-spread. It’s fun giving more colour to its warp and woof.”

  Caroline put her arms round his neck.

  “That’s what’s wrong with me. I want the same colours over and over again.”

  “I know.” He pulled away from her restlessly and turned out the lights.

  Chapter XIII

  CAROLINE was afraid. When she saw the Manor again would it have changed? Fifteen years almost to the day since she had left. Would it be as lovely as her memory held it?

  The carriage turned in at the lodge gates. Caroline answered Laurence’s eager questions with an inadequate ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ They were through the gate. Already she could see the sloping lawn, gay with the last remnants of rhododendrons and azaleas. They were passing the laurels at the bend. In a moment she would see the house.

  There it lay, the colour of autumn leaves. With loving eyes she drank in every line of it. The George the Third middle, holding the George the First portion on its right, and the William and Mary (with her grandfather’s Gothic library fixed to it like a pimple) on its left. “Mum,” Laurence’s voice was awe-struck. “Did you live here?”

  James was standing on the terrace. He had not been so moved since Selina died. His emotion showed in the spasmodic contraction of the muscles of his face. Caroline ran up the steps to him. He gave her a casual kiss, but his voice was not entirely under control.

  “My dear. Welcome home.” Caroline blinked away some tears.

  “This is Laurie, Papa. I brought him on with me in the carriage. He was so anxious to see the Manor.” James shook Laurence by the hand.

  “Were you? Well, what do you think of it?”

  Laurence looked round him.

  “I never knew it would be like this. It’s so big. It’s like a palace.”

  James chuckled.

  “Not quite. We’ve as much right to a palace as anybody, though. The Torrys are one of the oldest f
amilies in the country, you know.”

  Laurence nodded.

  “Yes, Mum told me. Where’s the Elizabethan north wall?”

  James held the boy by the arm.

  “Wait till I’ve met the rest of the family, and then I’ll show you.”

  “Can I see the oaks, too? And the one Uncle Ellison planted for the Queen’s first Jubilee? Mum saw him plant it.”

  James gripped the boy’s arm tight. He nodded affectionately at Caroline.

  “Not forgotten your home.”

  The wagonette drew up at the door. Nanny, carrying little James, got out with some consequence; this, she considered, was just the sort of house her young ladies and gentlemen ought to live in. Sarah, the nursemaid, followed, turning to lift Helen over the step. Helen safely on the ground, she held out her hand to Elizabeth. “No, thank you.” Elizabeth put her hands behind her back. “I can get out by myself.”

  James was introduced to the children. His namesake, little James, hid his face on Nanny’s shoulder and refused to be kissed. Helen, however, more than made up for him; she flung herself with affection at the only bit of her grandfather she could reach, which was his knees. He picked her up and kissed her. Then he put her down and stared at her. He turned to Caroline.

  “My dear, she’s the image of your mother. You should have named her after her.” He turned to Elizabeth. “And you are Betsy?” He stooped to kiss her.